"True, O Quang, but when this morning the great Li for the first time sat upon the golden throne of state, it trembled and tottered."
"A sad omen, O Lee; surely his majesty should have chosen a fortunate day."
"Truly, according to the chief bonze, it is an omen, signifying that while the body of Wey-t-song remains whole, the heaven-bestowed Emperor is in danger, and it is this that has angered him; but see, he comes," and both fell to the earth before the rebel general, who approaching with his great officers, said, "Have you discovered the princess, you crawling slaves?"
"At the risk of their lives thy slaves must deliver their miserable intelligence to the fortunate and heaven-bestowed founder of the most magnificent of dynasties," said Quang.
"Let the slave open his lips."
"The great princess has escaped with the Christian woman Candida," replied the trembling Quang.
"Escaped!" exclaimed the tyrant; "then let it be proclaimed throughout the empire that he who can bring her unarmed to our feet, shall receive high promotion, and the weight of his mean body in gold;" but at that moment, for the first time, seeing the body of the Emperor, he exclaimed, "The great traitor to his people has been too fortunate in having been permitted to close a luxurious career with the honorable punishment of self-destruction; he should have been exhibited alive in a cage;" then reading the lines upon the dead sovereign's robe, "See thou, O Quang, that the miserable body be cut into a thousand pieces, and distributed far from the tombs of his royal ancestors," said this new-made sovereign, with less generosity than the second Emperor of the Tartar race, who some years after, while hunting, happening to see in the distance the monument which had been erected to the memory of the unfortunate Wey-t-song, quitted his horse, and falling upon the earth, said, with tears in his eyes, "O Prince! O Emperor! worthy of a better fate, you know that your destruction was not owing to us, your death lies not at our door, your own subjects brought it upon you, it was they that betrayed you; it is therefore upon them, and not on my ancestors, that heaven must send down vengeance."
As you may imagine, this arrested the attention of Nicholas, who became deeply interested, and, as he listened, it was with difficulty he could keep down his indignation. He had smiled as he heard of Lee's terror at the omen, groaned at the slaughter of the people, rejoiced at the escape of the Lady Candida, the more so as the soldiers believed that she had carried away the princess with her, which would at least throw them off the right track; then at the sight of the brutal Li he had instinctively placed an arrow on his bow, but the danger of the princess taught him prudence, and he did but nervously twitch the string; when, however, Li spoke of the dead Emperor his heart throbbed with indignation, and he was nigh losing his presence of mind; then when Li delivered the order for the mutilation of the body, every vein in the boy's forehead and neck seemed bursting with rage, which, when the tyrant struck the corpse with his foot, he could no longer suppress; no human power could keep it back, and just missing the tyrant's throat so narrowly that its feather brushed his necklace, an arrow pierced the bark of the tree against which he was standing.
"See with what vigilance the guards have sought for traitors, when this could so nearly reach the mark," said the brave rogue, coolly, but holding his shield in readiness for the next.
Unlike Li-Kong, whose courage was as remarkable as his crimes, the teeth of his officers chattered, and their knees knocked together with fear, as if the arrow had been a thunderbolt from their own gods; when, however, they recovered, they placed their shields before their faces and rushed to the direction from whence the arrow had flown, and would soon have discovered Nicholas but for a huge lion, who, finding the door of his cage open, rushed upon the group with such unmistakable intentions, that not only the officers, but Li-Kong, brave as he was, fled in terror to the palace, with the beast at their heels. You will little wonder at the extreme fright of the soldiers, when I tell you that this lion was the only animal of his kind in China, having been presented to the late Emperor by a foreign king, or they would probably have met the brute face to face.